- China: Regime limits fuel price hike to cushion impact of rising oil prices
Source: Reuters
“China took steps to cushion the impact of rising fuel prices on Monday, increasing the regulated ceiling prices for retail gasoline and diesel but limiting the hike to about half what would normally be applied under the government’s pricing mechanism. The adjustments brought on by rising oil prices linked to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran were still the largest on record, however, lifting price limits close to levels seen in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine. State planner the National Development and Reform Commission said on Monday it would raise the maximum retail prices for gasoline and diesel by 1,160 yuan ($168) per metric ton and 1,115 yuan per metric ton, respectively, starting from Monday midnight.” (03/23/26)
- Pfizer to seek US FDA approval for Lyme disease vaccine candidate despite trial miss
Source: CNBC
“Pfizer on Monday said it will seek regulatory approval for a Lyme disease vaccine candidate despite the shot failing a late-stage trial. Pfizer said the vaccine missed the trial’s statistical goal because not enough people in the study contracted Lyme disease to be confident in the results. Still, the company said the shot reduced the rate of infection by more than 70% in people who received the vaccine versus placebo, efficacy the company thinks is strong enough to take to regulators. … A vaccine for Lyme disease isn’t expected to become a best-seller for Pfizer …. But Pfizer had billed the Lyme vaccine results as one of its major catalysts this year, and it represented a chance to introduce the only human vaccine for Lyme disease.” (03/23/26)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/23/pfizer-lyme-disease-vaccine-trial-fda-approval.html
- Zimbabwe: Regime thugs abduct top opponent of changes extending president’s rule
Source: ABC News
“Zimbabwe has detained the leading opponent to planned constitutional amendments that would extend the rule of the country’s 83-year-old president and make the post elected by Parliament, not the people. Former finance minister Tendai Biti was set to appear in court on Monday. It’s the highest profile detention yet of critics of the attempt to allow President Emmerson Mnangagwa to extend his rule, due to end in 2028, by two years. Police in recent months have banned meetings or arrested people for gathering to express opposition. Biti leads the Constitutional Defenders Forum, a group campaigning against the amendments. CDF spokesman Jacob Rukweza said Biti and programs director Morgan Ncube are accused of holding a public meeting without notifying police.” (03/23/26)
- The War on Immigrants Meets the War on Iran
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger“For those Americans who still believe that the U.S. government’s deadly, destructive, illegal, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran is about concern for the freedom and well-being of the people of Iran, what the U.S. government is now doing with its war on immigrants will help dispel such Americans of such a quaint notion. That’s because U.S. officials are in the process of deporting 400 Iranian immigrants to Iran as part of their war on immigrants. Yes, you read that right! U.S. officials are forcibly returning 400 Iranian immigrants to a country that the U.S. government and the Israeli government continue to bomb to smithereens. How is that action consistent with a supposed concern for the freedom and well-being of the Iranian people?” (03/23/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/03/23/the-war-on-immigrants-meets-the-war-on-iran/
- The Late Robert Mueller, Bill of Rights Executioner
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Jim Bovard“Former FBI director Robert Mueller died last week at the age of 81. The New York Times eulogized him as a ‘button-down, lockjawed, rock-ribbed exemplar of a vanishing caste.’ In reality, Mueller was simply a twenty-first century version of J. Edgar Hoover, trampling the Constitution and seizing new power on any pretext.” (03/23/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-late-robert-mueller-bill-of-rights-executioner
- Why AI may never be profitable
Source: Sex and the State
by Cathy Reisenwitz“I’d kind of assumed that the frontier AI labs (Anthropic, OpenAI, X) would reap the financial rewards of frontier AI development. But that might not be correct. AI might be more like electricity than Google. After all, who profited from electrification? It certainly wasn’t the inventors. Or their companies. The people who got rich from electricity were the ones who used it to make other things. Profits went to the factory owners who electrified their factories and the folks who sold light bulbs. The electric companies became utilities. I had assumed that the companies currently building AI would become the next Google and Bing. However, many believe that the actual models are more likely to become cheap and interchangeable, like electricity. Or Wi-Fi. Or railroads.” (03/23/26)
https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/why-ai-may-never-be-profitable
- The Quest for Authenticity
Source: Law & Liberty
by Samuel Mace“In democracies, rulers require the consent of the governed. Even within elite theories of democracies, some sort of common consent is necessary. The easiest way to secure such consent is to persuade the people that you are really one of them. Politicians from elite backgrounds work to appear as if they are unafraid of working a day in McDonald’s, or plead for the fortunes of a favourite football team. They are not ‘regular people,’ but they try to look like they belong. These efforts cut across ideology as attempts to cultivate authenticity emerge on both the left and right. But politics cannot be defined by personality alone.” (03/23/26)
- Imagining a 2028 Presidential Campaign for a Limited Presidency
Source: Liberal Currents
by Dennis Lytton“Jimmy Carter in 1977 cut the size of the White House staff by 30%. Coming just two years after Nixon’s resignation, Carter’s election coincided with a series of legislative reforms to tame the imperial presidency. Carter for a brief shining time seemed to embody that smaller presidency. He announced on his inauguration day that, ‘I would never permit my White House staff to try to run the major departments of government.’ We’ve endured nine withering years of Trump’s America (including what we now realize was but a fleeting interregnum under Biden). The idea that the presidency should be an executive with cabinet secretaries and independent agencies constrained strictly to statute and the constitution seems distant. Instead, the American imperial executive is led now by a few unaccountable staffers in the West Wing with the opaque character of a monarch’s courtiers.” (03/23/26)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/imagining-a-2028-presidential-campaign-for-a-limited-presidency/
- Power Is Built One Conversation at a Time
Source: Our Future
by Sulma Arias“Many people in this country feel attacks on our civil liberties have gone too far. I agree. Heavily armed ICE and CBP agents, who are paid with our tax dollars, hide their identities as they storm into our homes without warrants, suppress free speech, and even murder U.S. citizens who engage in peaceful protest. Many people feel it is time to stop this cruelty and violence. Yet what can we do? One answer is to flood the streets. Indeed, in places like Chicago and Minneapolis, we’ve seen tens of thousands show up to demand an end to the militarized occupation of their cities. And millions nationwide have turned out to No Kings rallies, and will do so again this March 28th. Mass moments like this are important; they show us we are not alone. Yet on their own, they are not enough …” (03/22/26)
https://ourfuture.org/20260322/power-is-built-one-conversation-at-a-time
- Trump wants an Iwo Jima moment in Iran; will Americans be OK with the fallout?
Source: The Hill
by Jos Joseph“The news that the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) might be headed to the Middle East to reinforce the 31st MEU, which was already ordered there, raises the odds that ground troops might play a part in President Trump’s war with Iran. … We all know of Joe Rosenthal’s famous picture of the raising of the American flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. Trump will want to have a similar image to get the American public hyped about an unpopular war and to boost his own image as a warfighting President along the likes of Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt. But what Trump needs to understand is what happened after the Iwo Jima photo was released to the public.” (03/23/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5795673-marines-middle-east-trump/
- Britain Is Bringing Back the Blasphemy Laws — and the Free Speech Union is Taking the Government to Court
Source: The American Conservative
by Toby Young“[UK secretary of state for communities Steve] Reed has officially adopted a definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ — ‘Islamophobia’ by another name — and announced that a government-appointed ‘special representative,’ a so-called ‘czar,’ will record complaints and ensure that anyone who falls foul of the definition is ‘appropriately’ dealt with. … Now, you might think: What’s wrong with that? Nobody wants Muslims to face hatred or discrimination. But here’s the problem. Discrimination against Muslims — indeed, against people of any religion — is already illegal under Britain’s Equality Act of 2010. … Britain repealed blasphemy laws that proscribed attacks on Christianity in 2008. It would be a peculiar irony if, 18 years later, a Labour government reinstated a new version of them …” (03/23/26)
- Why Donald Trump Just Can’t Stop Going to War
Source: TomDispatch
by Patrick Strickland“After protests across Iran turned deadly in January, President Donald Trump promised Iranians that ‘help is on the way’. On February 28th, the U.S. and Israel launched what immediately became a devastating war on Iran. American and Israeli warplanes began dropping bombs on a country of some 93 million people. Trump soon put out a video address, telling Iranians that ‘the hour of your freedom is at hand’. Around the time that video appeared, Iranians in the city of Minab were sorting through the corpses of more than 165 people killed in an airstrike on an elementary school for girls. That same day, an airstrike killed Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an 86-year-old who was supposedly already in poor health. Throughout the ensuing days, American and Israeli attacks struck hospitals, historic sites, and more schools.” (03/22/26)
https://tomdispatch.com/why-donald-trump-just-cant-stop-going-to-war/
- Could Artificial Intelligence Finally Make Central Planning Work?
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Sergio Martinez“During the early 1970s, the Chilean government imposed price controls on thousands of goods while expanding state control over industry. Shortages multiplied, black markets expanded, and economic coordination deteriorated. Political instability soon followed, culminating in the military coup of 1973. At first glance, the lesson seemed clear: central planning could not replicate the complex coordination performed by markets. And yet the idea never completely disappeared. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have revived an old argument. If earlier socialist planners failed because they lacked sufficient computing power, perhaps modern algorithms could finally solve the problem. Some contemporary writers have openly suggested this possibility.” (03/23/26)
https://fee.org/articles/could-artificial-intelligence-finally-make-central-planning-work/
- Two great ideas on how to deal with the Iran war consequences that Trump should consider
Source: New York Post
by Miranda Devine“As we enter the fourth week of the Iran war (or ‘excursion’), here are two great ideas about how to deal with some of the consequences — both from outside the Beltway. In fact, right in New York. One idea, unusually, is from longtime President Trump critic and former swamp creature Richard Haass, now back in his hometown. The other is from Wall Street guru Larry Kudlow, Trump’s great friend and former economic adviser. Both ideas are elegantly unconventional. In his Substack last week, Haass took a moment from trashing the president to suggest an alternative to boots on the ground for the prickly problem of opening the Strait of Hormuz, where tankers carrying one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas are being throttled by Iran. Don’t send the Marines in to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s principal export terminal — just close the Strait.” (03/22/26)
- Reason Roundtable, 03/23/26
Source: Reason
“It’s Time To Abolish the TSA.” (03/23/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/03/23/its-time-to-abolish-the-tsa/
- The Political Orphanage
Source: The Political Orphanage
“Heaton Goes to Prison.” (03/23/26)
- Rising, 03/23/26
Source: The Hill
“Robby Soave gives his radar on a hypothetical Tucker Carlson/Joe Kent ticket for the 2028 Presidential Election, highlighting how some on the right have become disgruntled with President Trump’s involvement in Iran.” (03/23/26)